


Echoes of a World Left Behind

by eksley05



Series: Worlds Apart: The Series [2]
Category: South Park
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), M/M, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26635273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eksley05/pseuds/eksley05
Summary: After everything that happened, Clyde now has to find a way to live.This is a continuation/spinoff story of Worlds Apart. If you haven't read that one, this one won't make sense. As with Worlds Apart, each chapter is in a different character's POV, but there are only four characters here: Clyde, Token, Craig, and Tweek.
Relationships: Craig Tucker/Tweek Tweak
Series: Worlds Apart: The Series [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937737
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. Too Much Too Fast: Clyde

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally published on FFNet on June 27, 2010, and last updated October 8, 2019. I have every intention of finishing this story, and also of not having another 9 year gap in between updating, but be aware that it is a work in progress.

I aimed my plastic gun at the TV in my living room, resting my finger on the trigger button of the Wii remote inside it as the game loaded, and tried to stop my hands from shaking. I was so nervous I was starting to feel queasy, and it took almost everything I had to keep my eyes focused on the TV screen in front of me. Every two minutes I had to go through a mental list of everything I had to do to seem like nothing was wrong. _Eyes on the game, check. Both hands on the gun controller, check. Legs willing to support me enough that I don't collapse out of nervousness, check ...Ish._ I had to keep shifting my weight from leg to leg every time I let my thoughts wander back to the thing I really didn't want to be thinking about, or else I really would just fall over.

I was concentrating so hard on keeping still and acting normal that somehow I forgot to pay attention to the video game I was playing; when the first wave of zombies showed up, my aim was way off, and I ended up shooting one of the innocents. Instantly, I felt my entire body tense, and thought to myself, not for the first time today, that maybe playing House of the Dead this afternoon was a really bad idea. Clearly I just didn't have the ability to concentrate today, and was that really my fault? God, we'd only had Kenny's memorial a _week_ ago, should I really be playing stupid video games? Wasn't that disrespectful in some way?

A zombie dropped down from the bridge above my video game character, latching onto him, and I started shaking my controller to get it off. Goddammit. It was something like our thirtieth time starting the game over, we were only on the second level, and I was already almost dead. I was playing like Token, and even though he was my best friend and everything, I was never afraid to tell him he sucked at killing zombies, and he knew it too. He played House of the Dead about as well as I played Tony Hawk. The point was, as egotistical as it may have sounded, I was a million times better at this game than he was. I didn't have much when it came to any kind of talent, but I could always cling to the fact that I kicked ass at a video game. For me to be playing at his skill level right now was proof of just how focused I wasn't.

I shook my gun controller harder in one last attempt to shake off the zombie, even though I was so close to death it was almost pointless. As if I needed more proof that I was way off my game today, my controller slipped out of my hands and flew across the room, landing with a thud on the carpet. Almost immediately I felt tears of frustration flood my eyes and I moved quickly over to where my controller had fallen, trying to keep them from spilling out.

"Dude." The voice from behind me made me instantly tense up. I froze where I was, on my knees on the carpet, holding the plastic gun tightly in my right hand. "You okay?"

If it had been a different time, in a different place, I might have laughed at the question. No, not at the question, actually, at the person asking me the question. Because, best friends or not, Craig Tucker had not sincerely asked me if I was all right since... Since fifth grade, back before my parents had discovered that two weeks away was a temporary miracle cure for all their marital problems. Back when they were fighting pretty much twenty-four/seven and it really looked like they were going to get a divorce. I'd been a miserable ten-year-old kid – who wouldn't have been, really? – and Craig, still a douchebag back then, but still my best friend too, had asked me how I was and meant it.

Even then, I'd known what a big deal it was for him to openly admit to caring like that – he had his whole, super-tough-guy-better-than-Cartman reputation to worry about and everything. Not that he _didn't_ care. I knew he did. Even though all of last year there'd been so many reasons to doubt that, some part of me had always known that us being best friends meant he had to care about me in some way. It just wasn't the same way he cared about Tweek.

My grip on the gun controller tightened suddenly. There it was, exactly what I didn't want to be thinking about: Craig and Tweek, and the feelings I got whenever I thought about them together. Some of it was physical – I got knots in my stomach, and I felt dizzy – but most of it was just more emotion than I could handle, and it wouldn't _stop_. I couldn't escape my own brain, no matter how much I wanted to, and once the Craig/Tweek slideshow had started in my mind, I couldn't stop it.

I'd always been a little uncomfortable being around the two of them when they were being all coupley, but I hadn't ever questioned it, it was just a fact. There hadn't been any reason for me to ever look any deeper than the surface for an explanation. Skies were always blue, water was always wet, mushrooms would always be a fungus, and Craig and Tweek together always made me feel weird and awkward. So I avoided looking at them when I was around them. That was all there was to it.

Except that _wasn't_ all there was to it. And even now, now that I knew that and knew that I had to deal with it, I just didn't want to. I wasn't like any of the rest of them , I couldn't adapt to things as easily as they could. I couldn't just... I couldn't find out something like this about myself and be okay and ready to move on and be a different kind of person in just a few days. It may have worked for the rest of them, but I just couldn't do it. I'd spent my whole life believing I was one person, _knowing_ who I was and happy enough about it, and then things got flipped upside-down and turned backwards and I wasn't who I thought I was anymore, and so much of my life had changed. I hated change, I always had, especially huge changes, and everything that had changed for me in the last month was huge.

"Yeah," I finally managed to mumble, slowly getting back to my feet. I lifted my free hand up to push some hair out of my eyes as I returned to my original spot in my living room, staring at the carpet the entire time. It was a blatant lie, and I knew it. I wasn't okay, not even close, but there was really no reason that I should be. My horribly timed discovery of feelings I'd never wanted to learn about aside, there was still everything else that had happened to me – to all of us. To one of us in particular. I looked up, at one of the walls of my living room, and remembered how a month earlier – though it felt so much longer than that – Token had been scrubbing at what he thought was pizza sauce.

There was no trace of red on the wall now, though – my parents must have found a way to get rid of the blood. I didn't know how; I'd been avoiding talking to them, to pretty much everyone, really. Token and I had gone to the McCormick's the day after we'd gotten back, a month ago, to tell them about Kenny dying, but after that, I'd mostly been staying in my room, with the exception of Kenny's memorial. There was too much I had to think about, and I couldn't – didn't want to – talk to anybody about anything. Because to explain to them how I was feeling would mean I had to explain _everything_ – all of my feelings were connected, and to talk about Kenny meant that I would sooner or later have to talk about Craig. I wasn't ready for that, and I wasn't sure I ever would be.

I heard Craig sigh and looked up in time to see him toss his Wii gun on the couch beside him, not even bothering to turn off the game. "Bullshit," he said, shaking his head. "I don't know why you still try to lie. You're hopeless at it." The words came out harshly, but I knew him well enough to know he didn't mean it that way, that he was actually genuinely interested in a serious conversation about my feelings. And maybe if things were different I would be able to appreciate that fact more than I did right now, but as it was, I was already so emotionally messed up I could barely look at my best friend; this new concerned-for-my-well-being Craig Tucker definitely wasn't helping. He wasn't supposed to care about me, he was supposed to just be his sarcastic self and treat me the same way he always had and save his abnormal niceness for Tweek, because Tweek had already adjusted to it over the years and it wasn't freakishly weird for him. Not like it was for me.

Not knowing what else to do, I shrugged, looking down at the Wii controller in my hand. I suddenly felt twelve different kinds of awkward, just standing there in my living room. I wanted to sit down, but I'd just gotten up off the floor and the only couch was over by where Craig was standing, all the way across the room. Number one, I didn't know if I would be able to move steadily enough to actually make it over there, and number two...it was right near Craig. God, this was so much harder than I'd thought it would be. I should've just told him I was busy when he showed up on my doorstep this morning, I should've told him my parents had told me I couldn't have anyone over... I should've done _something_ to avoid being alone with him. Or maybe I just never should've answered the door in the first place.

But my parents were both gone, and I'd just come downstairs from my room to get a sandwich, and then the doorbell rang... And I'd been reading Kenny's letter to me for the millionth time, and I'd thought that maybe it was Token at my door, and maybe Kenny was right and I should talk to him, at least a little bit about how I was feeling. I mean, even if it was all really general and vague, it still might have helped. I didn't have to talk to him about Craig, not yet – if ever. I could talk about everything _but_ him, at least then I'd be talking and not keeping _everything_ inside and having a horrible stomachache all the time.

So I'd left my sandwich in the kitchen and gone to the door, but when I swung it open Craig was standing there, wearing his blue hat with his longish black hair sticking out from underneath it, his hands in the pockets of his ICP hoodie, looking exactly the same as he always did, except Tweek wasn't anywhere near him.

And it was Tweek not being there that really threw me off. I honestly couldn't remember the last time before today that I'd seen Craig without Tweek around. A month ago I would have killed to have time with just Craig; now I wanted to do anything but be around only him. At least if it had been the two of them, and I'd let them in to hang out, then maybe they would've been too distracted by each other – as usual - to notice that I was acting any differently. If they'd both been here, I probably would have called Token and asked him to come over too so I at least could hang out with him while Craig and Tweek were...busy. Or maybe it would have been easier to for me to _not_ let them in if they came over together, maybe seeing them beside each other would jump start my brain into working right again. I would remember that they were Craig Tucker and Tweek Tweak, inseparable forever no matter what feelings I may or may not have, and I needed to get over my stupid hopeless _crush_ on my best friend.

But it hadn't been both of them, it had just been Craig, and I'd been so caught off guard by that, that when he'd looked past me into my living room and said, "Zombies?" all I'd been able to do was stutter, "Um... 'Kay." And all I'd been trying to do for the last hour was pretend that nothing was wrong or different and that I was okay.

But he was right, and I knew that – I was a horrible liar, and Craig's bullshit radar was off the charts accurate. Even if there was a chance that I could fool Token, my parents, anyone else, I couldn't fool Craig. But I couldn't tell him what was wrong. I _couldn't_. It would screw everything up, and things would get so awkward between us if he knew what I was suddenly feeling about him. God, and _Tweek_... My stomach twisted with guilt as I imagined how he would feel. Tweek, as paranoid as he was, had really good something-isn't-right-here intuition. He would instantly know something was different, and he would get scared, and that would make things even more complicated. With everything that those two had gone through in less than two years, I didn't think that Craig would be able to keep the truth from him. And if Tweek found out...then he would probably end up hating me, or at the very least not wanting to be around me very much. The logical train of thought there was that if Tweek didn't want to be around me, chances were I'd lose Craig too.

"Hey." When I didn't answer, Craig repeated, " _Hey_." His voice was really close to my ear, and when I looked up I was staring right at the zipper of Craig's hoodie, less than a foot away from me. "Dude, seriously. You need to talk?"

I shook my head; tears flooded my eyes and I tried desperately to keep some kind of control over myself. "I'm sorry," I managed to say, avoiding looking at Craig's face. This was too hard for me. I didn't know how to act anymore. Being honest right now would make me lose my best friend, but keeping things inside was making me sick. For the first time in a month, I actually wanted to talk about everything that had happened, but I didn't want to talk about things to Craig.

I wanted to talk to one of two people who'd proven to me that they wouldn't immediately judge me for anything I was feeling, but they were two people I was never going to see again. At least, not until I died – again. The kind of death that nobody could bring me back from. But even then, depending on where I wound up after that, I'd only get to see one of the two of them, and it made me feel awful but I wasn't sure which one I wanted to see and talk to more.

My grip tightened on the gun controller as I remembered Taco Loco. That place was the only thing I missed about being dead. Mitch – the owner, Mitch Hedberg, Craig's favourite comedian, of all people – hadn't known me from a hole in the ground, which had made it so much easier to talk to him without worrying. He listened, he really listened to me, when I was crying on his counter and speaking in half-English, half gibberish. His comments didn't have one shred of bias in them because he wasn't a part of my life, he didn`t know the people I knew. He was able to be more honest with me than I was sure any of my friends could have been.

"Fuck, man, don't be sorry." Craig paused, and I saw him glance down at his wrist, at his watch. When he spoke again there was something different in his voice, but I couldn't decipher what it was. "I have to go to work. You... You can talk to me if you need a. Someone. Okay?"

"Okay," I replied, my voice barely above a whisper. I didn't even register Craig walking away, or my front door opening and then closing again. I sunk down onto the living room floor and curled into a ball. There was too much in my head, and I couldn't deal with it all, I needed some way to get it out, but who was there for me to talk to?

The only friend I had who came close to being like Mitch was Kenny - not that anybody else was incapable of caring. I mean, Butters cared about everything and everyone, and technically he already knew about how I felt – I hadn't meant to at the time, he'd just been right there when I'd finally come to terms with exactly what I was feeling and exactly what that mean, and I'd kind of had a verbal heart attack at him and probably scared him to death.

But he and I weren't close, and I knew myself, I knew that I couldn't talk to him again about things now and not feel awkwardly stupid. That, and...Butters, for whatever reason, was in love with Cartman, and after dying and being split up the way they had been, it didn't seem like the time for me to want to come talk to him about my stupid life and its messed up problems. Kenny, though... He was the other person I wanted to talk to and couldn't. He was – different, to talk to about things. He could pick up on someone's whole issue by only hearing two words. It would be easier to talk to him because he would understand completely without needing me to say more than a sentence or two. And since I could hardly even think about how I felt about Craig without crying – I sniffled, my vision blurring as a few tears dripped from my eyes onto the Wii controller that was still in my hand.

The difference between Kenny and Mitch was that Kenny would be _too_ concerned about how I was feeling and he would try to make things better for me. That was just the kind of person he was, he'd proven that by sacrificing himself. I wasn't ungrateful about that aspect of Kenny – there had been so many times in my life that he'd been the best person in the world to talk to – but there were times when I just wanted to talk and have someone listen, like Mitch had up in Heaven just before Kenny had brought us back. I just couldn't tell if this was one of those times, or if I really needed Kenny to talk to. Especially since in the letter he'd written me, he'd made it perfectly clear that he'd known, or at least had an idea of, my newfound Craig issue. Maybe, in his Kenny-way, he could've said something, given me some advice, that would make all of this easier for me. Maybe he would've known what to do.

Or maybe he had. Part of his letter to me echoed in my mind: _'All I can say is that when you're ready, really ready to trust someone enough to talk to them about it, talk to Token… He'll understand, I know he will, and I know he'll be there for you, no matter what…"_ It was simple, and something I'd considered, but never gotten up the nerve to do. Which was stupid, really; this was Token, who'd I'd always been so close with that I considered him more of a sibling than a friend. I shouldn't be afraid to talk to him about anything. Token was a lot of things, but he'd never, in all the years I'd known him, been a bad friend to me. Maybe it was time I trusted him with more than just my superficial problems.


	2. Waiting: Token

I turned off the TV with a sigh and leaned back on my living room couch. There was nothing on in the middle of the day on a Friday except soap operas and game shows, neither one of them programming I had any interest in – most of were probably repeats anyway. I pulled my legs up so I was sitting cross-legged on the couch, and grabbed one of my dad's Time magazines from the table beside me. I'd never really realized how little time I spent in my house until we got back from New York. After everything, when all I did was spend time in my house. Before, I'd be at Clyde's, or the video store while he was working – well, in theory while he was working. Most of Clyde's shifts ended up with him and I sitting behind the counter and watching movies on the store's TV, and eating popcorn off the shelf that we didn't pay for. It wasn't like anybody would've cared if they'd caught us, not that anyone really came into the store anyway.

Nobody rented movies in South Park anymore; everyone had Netflix or Tivo or enough money to just buy stuff. By all logic, the video store should've gone bankrupt by now, but the owner, Mr. Cooper, lived down where I'd used to live, in one of those ridiculously pretentious, expensive mansions. The guy had more money than _my_ parents. He kept the store going for some weird tax benefit, or something, I never had been too clear on that. He and my parents used to talk all the time, and I'd heard him explain it to my dad once. Honestly, I hadn't really been listening; I only cared enough to worry about Clyde possibly losing his job. That would mean that we would lose out on a place to hang out at when we couldn't be at either of our houses. But Mr. Cooper had said something about how as long as he had at least one employee he could get some special benefit for being the owner or...something. Something like that. It was nothing that made sense to me, but as long as it meant there was still free popcorn and movies for me and my best friend to watch, I was happy.

If I wasn't hanging out with Clyde, every so often I'd wander down to Harbucks, where I'd usually find Craig and Tweek, and a ton of free drinks. And if none of the three of them were working – a rare occurrence, especially recently with everyone trying to scrounge up money for New York, but it did happen – we'd find somewhere to hang out, the four of us. Usually it was at Clyde's house, or mine – we'd all figured out a long time ago that Clyde's house had the best video game and movie collections, but mine had the best food, so where we ended up all depended on whether we were more hungry, or needing to shoot things in the face.

That was pretty much our lives, and I'd been so looking forward to the day after our trip ended – _would_ _have_ ended if we'd made it for the whole thing – because I knew that Clyde, Craig, and Tweek had all asked for an extra day off just so we could have one of those days. Sure, we would've had time to all hang out in New York, but that was a huge city, and so different from South Park, so... _exotic_ , I guess, is a good word for it. We – I, at least – just wanted things to get back to normal after the year of hardly seeing anyone. Except that that wasn't at all how things had ended up happening.

I hadn't spoken to Clyde much since we'd gotten back to South Park and told Kenny's parents what had happened to their son. Even then, he'd barely said two words to me the entire time. And since our midnight memorial service for Kenny last week, I hadn't heard from him at all. Not even on either one of our eighteenth birthdays, his two days before Kenny's actual funeral, and mine one day after.

I knew Clyde, I knew him probably better than he knew himself. This was killing him; he couldn't handle any of it. He'd never been able to deal with anything upsetting, at least not well. His parents' fighting when we were kids had been so awful for him. He always used to call me from the basement, where he would go sit by his house's unnaturally loud furnace, to try to get away from the noise of his parents' yelling, and I always felt like a horrible best friend because I never knew the right thing to say to make him feel any kind of better. I still felt like a horrible best friend now, for the exact same reason.

Everything with the crash, and Kenny, was bad enough. I didn't know much about Clyde's time up in Heaven, and I didn't want to ask. Clyde would tell me when he was ready to tell me; that was just the way he operated. And Kenny... There was so much to the Kenny part of things. The McCormicks not seeming to care one little bit about his death had really bothered Clyde, I could tell, even though he hadn't said anything. It would bother any normal person with a heart, obviously, but Clyde had, I thought, a bigger heart than most people, which meant that he felt emotions at least twice as strongly as others. Kenny's family hadn't impressed me either, I mean for Christ's sake, we all knew Kenny dying hadn't meant shit for forever, but you would _think_... You would think that the two of us, friends of Kenny's since preschool, taking one of his deaths so seriously now would mean at least _something_.

Nobody seemed to understand that this wasn't a normal thing, that this was different. It was so frustrating knowing that nobody was going to take any of us seriously about it. But it wasn't just the lack of concern on Kenny's parents' part that was hurting my best friend. That blond and him had been such good friends, they'd ended up being closer than I'd ever thought they would've been. They had different tastes in a lot of things than me – movies in particular – which was why I never hung out with the two of them. But I didn't have to hang out with them to know that if for whatever reason, our group – me, Clyde, Craig, and Tweek – ever split up, with Kenny around Clyde wouldn't have had to look too far for a best friend.

And then there was Craig, and whatever it was Clyde felt about or for him. God, I didn't blame him for hiding out from the rest of world, not when he had that on top of everything else to deal with. If I were him, I would be ignoring everyone else too. I still wished he would at least text me or something, though. I was really worried about him. _Especially_ when it came to Craig – mostly because of Kenny's letter to me, telling me to take care of Clyde because he was going to need me. Obviously that meant that something had happened after the crash, before Kenny had called in his favors and gotten us all back. He had to have seen _something_ that indicated that Clyde felt more than friendship for Craig, and that those feelings weren't going to stay hidden in the very bottom of his subconscious for much longer.

I felt like the biggest douchebag in the world for having teased him about having a crush on Craig for so long. Somewhere in my brain I knew that Clyde's misery lately and his suddenly having to deal with his feelings had almost nothing to do with me. My brown-haired, brown-eyed, slightly-shorter-than-me-but-not-by-much best friend lived in denial about most things in his life, but he wasn't stupid. He would have figured out on his own whether or not he legitimately felt something for Craig, but that didn't stop the rest of me for just feeling like an asshole and a terrible friend for not even stopping to think about what would happen if what I teased him about was actually true.

I put down the magazine I'd been half-looking though and glanced down at my watch. It was almost three; my parents wouldn't be back for a couple of hours yet. I sighed, and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket, setting it on the arm of the couch beside me once I checked that I had no missed alerts. There was absolutely nothing to do in my house by myself. There was a reason I wasn't usually home alone – it was so boring, all I really did when I was here by myself was eat, read, and sleep. I didn't feel like doing any of those things. The only thing I read these days was Kenny's letter to me, and that was already getting so worn out that I was afraid of the paper falling apart if I unfolded and folded it again many more times. For the thousandth time today I debated calling Clyde again, but then I had to remind myself for the thousandth time that I couldn't do anything to help him and I had to give him time. So I'd just sit. And do nothing.

Every once in a while, Craig would send me a text message, but that didn't happen very often. I assumed he was being more attentive than usual to Tweek, who probably needed it. Tweek was, even though I hated thinking it that way, why Kenny had had to sacrifice himself. Not that I blamed Tweek for doing what he did to be with Craig, not that I disliked him for it or anything like that. I could see where he was coming from, where being without Craig was hurting him more than anything else, and he couldn't have known what Kenny was planning or what he would've had to do. But Tweek was Tweek, and chances were he was blaming himself and making himself sick thinking that this was all his fault, and he would need Craig to be his voice of reason.

I hadn't heard from anyone else either – Butters, Cartman, Stan, Kyle, Christophe... One of Craig's text messages a few days ago had informed me that Christophe was suddenly MIA again and he hadn't said anything to anyone, but for all anyone knew he could just be off on one of his mercenary missions. I wondered how Kyle was dealing with the lack of Christophe, and what was going on there. At our memorial service, he hadn't been wearing the ring, and he and Stan had looked closer than usual. And Christophe had seemed, if it was possible, way more distant than usual. Or at least, more distant than I'd become used to. He'd gone back to being the way he'd used to be, way back when he'd first shown up, before the ten of us had gotten so close. I wondered what had happened, because obviously something had, to give Christophe back all that coldness and anger. Whatever the exact reason was, all I knew was that it definitely had _something_ to do with Stan. Maybe I'd ask one of them, Kyle or Stan, about it sometime. Once I was sure that Clyde was okay. My best friend was the one I was concerned about right now.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my phone glow a split-second before I heard it vibrate. I grabbed it and flipped it open so fast I almost threw it across the room. Just one vibration meant a text message, and I was so hoping to see Clyde's number that I actually was disappointed when it was Craig. With another sigh – what felt like my eight millionth sigh today – I clicked on his message.

_Is Clyde pissed at me?_

I blinked down at my phone, not sure how to answer that – not sure why Craig was even asking me that question. In the few text message conversations we'd had in the last month, I'd told him about Clyde's reclusiveness, so he should know that Clyde not talking to him wasn't anything personal. At least, not as far as he knew – it was partly personal, but Craig obviously had no idea what Clyde was feeling. But still, he shouldn't be thinking that it had anything to do with anger. Granted he hadn't been around much in the last year, but he knew Clyde almost as well as I did. He should know that our brunet's tendency to hide from what hurt him would be the reason none of us had heard from him in so long, not anything else.

I stared at the tiny screen of my phone for another few seconds, before typing a message back. _Not as far as I know. Why?_ A couple of minutes later, my phone buzzed again.

_Dunno. He was...weird when I was at his place just now._

What? Craig had been over at Clyde's? I tried to ignore the small twinge of jealousy I felt when I read that. So what if Craig had been at Clyde's house? That didn't mean anything bad about Clyde's and my friendship. They'd been best friends once, yeah, okay, but that was way before Craig and Tweek were ever a thing. I mean, the four of us had always been a group of friends, and Craig had always been more or less the 'leader' of us, but back then instead of Tweek being his second-in-command it was Clyde. Eventually, somehow, it ended up that Craig was hanging out more with Tweek than with Clyde, and so the brunet and I just naturally started hanging out together by ourselves when our other ones were busy with each other. But it wasn't a big deal – Clyde had told me once, just after Craig and Tweek had started dating, that it hadn't seemed like he was being abandoned, that it was more like Tweek had more of a reason to need Craig right then. It was the most profound thing I'd ever heard him say, and it was one of the ways I could tell that Clyde's feelings for Craig were really recent; if that whole situation happened now, Clyde would feel even worse than abandoned.

I doubted that Clyde and Craig had ever had conversations like the ones we had. Craig wasn't much of a talker, at least not to anybody but Tweek. Clyde and I could talk forever about the weirdest stuff, and none of it seemed weird to us at the time. We'd had conversations about everything from Kyle's mom's hair to how much easier ants' lives would be if they could drive. We had nothing close to the kind of friendship that Craig and he had had, but that wasn't in any way a bad thing. Sometimes I really felt like our friendship was better than theirs, just because it seemed less one-sided. Craig...had a tendency to take over relationships, I'd noticed – any kind of relationship, friendship or otherwise. Not a problem for Tweek, who kind of needed someone like that to protect him from the world, but Clyde wasn't like that. He and I...complimented each other better, I guess you could say.

So really, jealousy right now really didn't make much sense. It wasn't like Clyde had invited Craig over before he'd talked to me or anything. That wasn't likely, anyway. I really didn't think that Clyde would have the easiest time in the world talking to Craig lately. Not even about anything serious, just at all. If there was anybody that Clyde would probably want to be avoiding the most right now, it was Craig. Still... I reread Craig's text message again. If he'd been at Clyde's house, I still wanted to know why – and what exactly he meant by saying Clyde had been acting 'weird'.

 _I really don't know, dude, I haven't talked to him since last week. Weird how?_ I hit the send button on my phone, flipped it shut, and stood up, intending to go into my kitchen to grab a can of Coke. I was halfway there when my house phone rang. I hesitated, glancing behind me at where our cordless phone was sitting on the coffee table, before deciding to just let the machine get it. I walked into my kitchen, swung open the door of my fridge, took a Coke off the bottom shelf, and went back into my living room in time to hear, "...I, just, um, wanted to... If you're not busy today, I—"

I tossed my unopened drink onto the couch and grabbed the phone, hitting the talk button and pressing it to my ear. "Clyde?"

"Oh." My best friend's miserable voice echoed over the phone line. "You are home."

"Yeah, I'm here, what's up?" I held the phone to my ear with my shoulder and sat down cross-legged in the same spot I'd been in all day. My cell phone vibrated in my hand and I flipped it open to a new text message.

_Obviously upset but he won't talk to me. I think he's pissed because of last year & me not seeing you guys much._

God, Craig could be so fucking oblivious sometimes. It was kind of good, in a way, this time, because it meant he wouldn't be able to pick up on the real reason for Clyde's, as he called it, 'weirdness'. But seriously, did he not get that Clyde had a lot to be upset about? I rolled my eyes and typed a two word message back: _Um, Kenny?_

On the other end of the phone, Clyde sniffled, and I knew he was crying. Or at the very least, he had been. When he spoke again, his voice cracked. "I think... I need to –" He cut himself off and I just heard him breathing for a few seconds. My phone vibrated again and I looked down.

_No shit._

"Are you – I mean," I stopped myself from asking the stupid question as I typed on my cell phone. "Do you need anything?"

_I'm just saying. He and Kenny were really close._

"I..." Another loud sniffle, and then a couple of really soft whimpers. I sat on my couch, awkwardly listening as Clyde cried, knowing there was nothing I could do but wait until he could talk again. I wanted so much to tell him that I knew about the Craig thing, but I couldn't – it wouldn't help things. In fact, it would probably make things worse, because if I had figured it out, what was stopping Craig from having figured it out too? I knew that would be Clyde's thought process, and on top of everything else that was killing him inside, he didn't need to have the possibility of Craig knowing something like that about him weighing on his mind too.

 _I think it's something else. He wouldn't even look at me._ Craig's next text message was weird, and it took me a minute to understand why. He sounded legitimately really concerned, which wasn't something that happened with Craig often. It wasn't that he didn't care about anyone or anything – though there wasn't much that he gave a shit about, really. It was more that he very, very rarely _showed_ that he cared. If you were his friend, you were supposed to understand that he wouldn't be your friend if he didn't care, no matter how he treated you, he was just Craig and that was his way. As long as he called you a friend, you mattered.

But now, with Clyde...he actually seemed like it bothered him that Clyde had been distant. And that was weird. I had no idea how to answer his text message; not that it mattered, because a second later I got another one, just as Clyde mumbled, "Token?"

"I'm here," I said, clicking on the new message.

 _Can you come to Harbucks later?_ Translation: Craig had more to say than he could fit into a text message conversation.

"Could you – could you come over?" Clyde's voice was so quiet I had to strain to hear him through the phone. "I think – I need someone to talk to."

"Of course," I answered immediately, in the middle of typing a response to Craig. "I'm leaving right now, I'll be there as soon as I can, okay?" My heart was racing, I was so relieved that Clyde was finally ready to talk about things. It would help him, I knew it would, and I would finally be able to feel like I was actually _doing_ something, after being so helpless during the whole entire situation – first I'd been stuck in a hospital bed while my best friend had been on a whole other plane of existence, then I'd had to accept the fact that Kenny was letting himself die for real so the rest of us could live and I couldn't stop him, and then I'd had to let Clyde be alone for days - though it felt more like weeks... This was actually finally something I could _do,_ take care of my best friend, just like Kenny had said.

"Okay," Clyde whispered. "Thank you. Bye, Token." He disconnected, and I hung up my phone, sending my reply to Craig at the same time. _Yeah. What time? You closing?_ I picked my hoodie up off the floor where it had been lying for days, pulled my keys out of the pocket, and headed for my front door.

_Yeah. Around nine?_

_Okay. See you then._

I slipped on my shoes and opened my front door, blinking at the bright sunlight. It didn't take me long to get to Clyde's, not if I took the shortcuts. I'd be there in fifteen minutes, probably less, which gave me at least five hours with him before I'd have to leave for Harbucks.


	3. How Long Has It Been: Craig

"What's the difference between a cappuccino and a frappuccino?"

I sighed, rolling my eyes at the same time, and leaned against the back counter. I'd been working at Harbucks for a long time now, but I was always still surprised by how fucking stupid some people really were. In all honesty, the intelligence levels of people in this town really shouldn't shock me, but every so often someone would be _so_ stupid that I just had to stop and think, _"Really?"_ This was definitely one of those times.

Before I answered the skinny blonde bitch who was looking at me like her question was all kinds of legit and not retarded, I turned and looked up at the giant menu boards hanging on the wall. Part of me was seriously hoping I wouldn't actually have to answer her, that maybe she'd follow my lead and figure out for herself that _frapp_ uccinos were listed under _cold_ beverage, and _capp_ uccinos listed under _hot_.

But, again, I gave a human being too much credit. After at least forty-five seconds of silence, I heard from behind me, "Um, hello?"

I didn't even bother turning around. I had no patience for idiots like her tonight. "Frappuccino's cold," was all I said as I fished my phone out of the pocket of my red Harbucks apron. No new text messages, but it was almost nine. Token should be here soon.

"Like a Slurpee?" Skinny Blonde Bitch asked. "What kinds do you have?"

I pointed up at the menu as my phone vibrated. Glancing down, I saw one new text message from Tweek, and couldn't help smiling when I read it. _I'm so sorry if I'm not awake when you get home but I'm so tired but I'll try to wait up for you._

 _Go to sleep, Tweeker, you're sick, you need it._ I typed back, hitting the send button just as SBB spoke again.

"I want a vanilla bean one but can you put espresso in it?"

"'Spresso's extra," I said, moving the half step forward to ring her through on my till.

"Oh. Really?" She scrunched up her nose and then smiled at me in what I could only assume was meant to be attractive, except it really wasn't. Bitch looked like Skeletor with an eating disorder; I wouldn't touch her even if I did swing that way.

"Yep," I replied, tapping on my register with my right hand. "Still want it?"

SBB rolled her eyes at me now, obviously disappointed in my lack of response to her flirtation. She had the kind of smug pseudo-self-confidence that only those who had been told they were beautiful, and didn't actually believe it themselves, could have. There was a difference between this kind of confidence and the real kind. SBB was trying way too hard. I gave her another once-over, from her bleached hair to her Abercrombie hoodie to her pre-ripped _they're-not-old-they're-fashionable_ jeans.

She was probably the secret whore of some rich older boyfriend with a receding hairline, a wife, and two kids, who just needed a blow job every couple of weeks so he would tell her all the lies she wanted to hear.

I stopped tapping and blinked. That had been an exceptionally harsh thought, even for me, on a day like today where the only customers I'd had all day had been morons. As much as the entire human race pissed me off, I'd never thought something that awful about a person before. Minus Cartman, but he wasn't what I would consider a person. I blinked again, and looked down at the screen of my register. Maybe this girl wasn't as dumb as I was making her out to be, maybe my day was getting to me and I was just tired. I was just about to offer to not charge her for the espresso when all of a sudden, long bleached blonde hair blocked my view of the monitor screen and I looked up to see SBB's face two inches from my own.

"Are you _sure_ I have to pay for it?" She whispered the words at me, and I cringed in disgust. Never mind – this bitch could fuck right off.

"Yes." I said, my voice flat. "Espresso costs extra. No exceptions."

SBB glared at me – like I was supposed to be afraid of somebody like her – and straightened up, putting a hand on one anorexic hip. I could just imagine her meeting her Barbie clone friends later and bitching about how her barista at Harbucks was a horrible asshole who charged her an extra thirty-seven cents for a shot of espresso in her cappuccino. Or was it frappuccino?

" _Fiiiiiine_ ," she sighed, drawing the word out so it was eighteen syllables, digging in her purse.

"Five ten." I stood there for thirty seconds while she tried to scrounge up money, but when it became clear that her purse could house a family of twelve, I shuffled across the floor to the cold bar, and started making her frappuccino. Ugh, why had I let Josh go home early? I was really wishing I'd gotten him to stay just so that he could've dealt with SBB and I could've gone out for a smoke to try to chill the fuck out before Token got down here. Skinny Blonde Bitch and her retard questions and belief that her looks could get her whatever she wanted was exactly why I'd never wanted a career in anything that required me to deal with the public. People pissed me the fuck off.

I finished her frappuccino, brought it over to her, and still had to wait another two minutes before she found a way to pay for it. As she was handing me a five dollar bill and a quarter, I heard the door open and looked up to see Token walking inside. He waved, I nodded at him, and gave SBB her fifteen cents and pushed her drink across the counter to her.

"Um, do you—"

"Right over there." I cut her off before she could complain that I hadn't given her a straw. Without another word, or even – surprisingly – an eye roll, she slung her bag over her shoulder, picked up her drink, and walked over to the condiment stand. I didn't relax until she was out the door, and then, after flipping off the area where she had been standing for the last fifteen minutes, I leaned over the counter, resting my head in my hands. "Fuck," I said.

"Long day?"

I lifted my head and nodded at Token, who had taken a seat on one of the comfy chairs. "Longest fucking day of my life."

"It's been busy?"

I shook my head, pushing myself up off the counter, and gestured to my nearly empty cafe – the only people in it were Token and me. "No," I said, walking out from behind the counter and sitting down in the chair across from my friend. "It's been stupid."

"Yeah, she seemed..." Token paused, obviously having a hard time finding a diplomatic way to say what he wanted to say. I had no problems with that kind of thing.

"Like an anorexic retard bitch." My tone was sharper than I'd intended for it to be, and I surprised both myself and Token, who jumped slightly at my words. He tilted his head and looked at me. I took my lighter out of my pocket and started flipping it open and shut. I'd quit smoking for Tweek – while somehow completely avoiding tobacco withdrawal – but I still carried a lighter with me everywhere. It gave me something to do with my hands that wasn't flipping people off.

"Is everything okay?" Token's question was hesitant, like he was worried I was going to snap at him. I really didn't blame him, in most other situations – all other situations, really – I would have. I had never been good at any of the whole talking about how I _feel_ shit. I preferred to deal with my problems on my own, because by definition, _my_ problems dealt with _my_ life and that was nobody's business but my own. And Tweek's, these days, but Tweek was a special case, and everyone knew that.

The point was, with the only exception of Tweek, I didn't go to any of my friends with any of my issues, and they didn't come to me with theirs. That was the way it had been our entire lives, and the ones who really mattered – Tweek, Clyde, and Token – knew that that didn't mean I was any less of their friend. It just meant that I was – and am – not good with talking about emotional shit. There was only one other time that people had seen me vulnerable and gotten me to talk, but even then I hadn't said much – it was Token who had figured out what my problem was and said it out loud. Clyde had just cared enough to be there.

That had been almost more than a year ago, and it was the only time in my entire existence that something like that had happened. I'd gone back to dealing with my big problems on my own, and nobody ever knew when there was something wrong with my life. But now there was a problem that I couldn't handle on my own. There were too many different aspects to this problem, and I couldn't keep it all inside, it was driving me crazy. But I couldn't bring myself to talk to Tweek about it, either – not when he was already making himself physically sick with guilt. Clyde was, for some reason, avoiding me, and if he was pissed at me I wouldn't be able to blame him, because I'd treated him horribly in the last year. Token was the only person left that I trusted enough to be semi-comfortable talking to about all this.

That was why I'd asked him to come here tonight, but now that he was sitting across from me, I didn't know how to start talking. My first instinct was to flip him off and respond to his question with, "I'm fine." Old habits die hard, after all. I fought to resist the impulse and said instead, simply, "No."

"Obviously," Token said with a hint of a smile."You look awful, Craig. I wouldn't expect things to be okay."

"Then why'd you ask?" I mumbled, sinking deeper into the cushiony chair.

Token shrugged. "Habit, I guess." Then, shaking his head, he added quietly, "It's a stupid question."

We were both silent for a few minutes. I looked up, watching the ceiling fan as it spun in slow, lazy circles. I liked my job when it was quiet like this, when there were no customers. Usually all my shifts at Harbucks were shifts where Tweek was working with me. It had been weird not having him here for this whole last week. It was the first time in what felt like close to forever that I hadn't been around him for that much time. Even dying hadn't kept us apart for long...

"Token—" I immediately paused, with my eyes still on the fan, and tried to figure out how the fuck to say what I wanted to say to him. He didn't say anything, but I could feel him watching me and I knew he was listening. "I didn't – mean to be an asshole." He stayed silent, and I immediately felt the need to fill the silence with something else so it didn't end up being ridiculously awkward. "Things just got. You know."

"Tweek," was all Token said in response. I glanced at him and he shook his head a little bit. "You don't need to explain yourself to me, Craig. I understand."

He hadn't emphasized any one of his words differently than the others, I knew that, but to me it felt like he'd said that I didn't have to explain myself to _him_. Meaning that there was someone else I had to explain myself to. Meaning Clyde. Meaning the person who'd been my best friend for so long who I'd treated like shit – not on purpose, but the fact remained that I had – when I'd known he was a highly sensitive human being. If I were him I would have given up on trying to keep our friendship going a long time ago.

"Clyde doesn't." I sighed, and then leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands. "You should've seen him when he opened his front door and saw me on his doorstep." I paused, remembering the look on Clyde's face. "I don't even know why he let me in. He obviously didn't want me to be there."

Token opened his mouth, hesitating for a second before saying, "Well...maybe he's just still adjusting. You know. With Kenny and everything... They'd gotten to be really close friends."

I shook my head, running a hand through my hair. It was getting way too long, but I didn't feel like getting it cut. I didn't give a fuck what I looked like anyway. I figured when it got long enough for customers to complain I'd just violate dress code and wear my hat. "No, this was different. I know what upset, miserable Clyde is like. He cries and hides himself away, but he'll pour his fucking heart out if someone just cares enough to show up to see if he's all right. He barely said two words to me the entire time I was at his house. He didn't look at me, and he was playing House Of The Dead like...well, like you. No offense," I added with a shrug.

"None taken." Token shrugged right back at me.

"Point is, this was a Clyde I don't know. And it fucking bothers me that he's turned into someone I don't recognize, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to do anything to fix the fact that I treated him like I didn't give a fuck." I stopped mid-rant to take a deep breath, and then continued, "If he won't talk to me, I can't exactly change anything. I want my best friend Clyde back."

It had been a long, long time since I'd said anything like that, since I'd admitted to anything that would in any way make me seem any kind of vulnerable. I could tell that I surprised Token – his eyes went wide for half a second and he sat a little bit forward in his chair. In response, I threw myself backwards in mine and let my arms dangle over the sides, looking up at the ceiling again.

"Just...fuck," I said to the ceiling tiles. "You know?" I closed my eyes. I had never felt more grateful that tonight was an abnormally slow night, and that in half an hour I could close this bitch and get the fuck out of here. Not to mention the fact that tomorrow was my day off. Not for the first time I wondered what had compelled me to go back to work as soon as we got back last month, instead of taking advantage of the entire month off I _would_ have had had everything gone the way it was supposed to.

"Clyde isn't mad at you."

I opened my eyes and watched Token take out his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans and flip it open. Looking down at it, he added, "I saw him before I came here. He's not doing well but he isn't pissed at you or anything."

"Sure seemed like it," I mumbled, trying to ignore the fact that Clyde felt more comfortable talking to Token about shit than me. It wasn't like it didn't make perfect sense – I mean, Token was a better best friend to Clyde than I'd ever been. And Clyde and I hadn't been that kind of close in years. It just sucked, under the circumstances.

"I just... I don't think he's used to you being the kind of person who would care enough to talk to him and to want him to talk to you about anything." Token spoke slowly, like his words were all carefully thought out."You're seeing a different Clyde, but...he's seeing a different person too. Face it, Craig, talking about problems isn't a you thing to do and you know it."

He was right, I did know it. I'd never been that way. Okay, so maybe Clyde was just weirded out by my sudden one eighty in personality. It still seemed like it had been something else. But then, maybe I was reading too much into shit because I had so much going on in my own head. Either way, I was determined to repair the fractures, breaks, bloody gaping stab wounds, and whatever else in my friendship with Clyde. The only problem was, I didn't know how. So, in yet another extra-rare moment of complete and utter un- _me_ -ness, I said, "So what do I do?"

Token sighed, not answering me for at least a minute. Finally, he said, "I don't know."

"Great." I closed my eyes again. My whole life – minus Tweek – was fucking stupid.

"I'm sorry."

"Not your fault." It was my turn to sigh.

"You know..." Token said slowly. "Tomorrow's Saturday."

"Yeah," was my only response.

"Do you work?"

I shook my head. "No. Tomorrow is my one day off. Tweek and I are going to hang out and watch some Red Racer, and eat chicken noodle soup or something since he's still sick."

"My house has chicken noodle soup. And a bunch of cold medication. And like four spare bedrooms."

I opened one eye and watched Token carefully, wondering if he was going where I thought he was going with this.

"And we didn't get to all hang out like we should've been able to, and I know that Tweek is sick and Clyde's upset and things are awkward with you guys – because of that," Token continued, and I saw him bite his lip. "I was just thinking, Saturdays were always movie nights, so if you want to—"

"Yeah," I interrupted, sitting up again. "Fuck, yeah, how long has it been?"

"Something like a year," he replied, with a half-smile.

"Yeah, that's fucking not going to happen again." My tone left absolutely no room for debate or dissent. "For fuck's sake, we used to do that every week."

"Tweek won't mind?" I could hear the hope in Token's voice and I knew that he wanted things to be the way they used to be just as much as I did.

"As long as you have coffee I really don't think he'll complain," I said. "You know that's all he needs. But... What about Clyde? You think he'll go for it?"

Token glanced down at the floor for a split second, but then he nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, no, I don't think he'll say no. I mean, like you said, it's been forever. I'll stop by his place on my way home to tell him."

"Great," I said, sincerely this time. Suddenly energized, I stood up and nodded in the direction of my espresso bar. "You want a drink before you go? I'll make one for Clyde too and you can bring it over."

"Sure." Token stood up too. "Do you remember what he and I drink?"

"Salted caramel diabetes – I mean hot chocolate, right?" I headed behind the counter and grabbed two cups.

"You haven't even tried it yet have you?" Token leaned on the counter and watched as I poured milk into pitchers and started steaming it.

I rolled my eyes as I brought the cups over to the syrups, tilting the cup so Token could see the contents after I finished putting the three different syrups in. "Yeah, no, I really don't need a quarter of a cup of syrup in my diabetes, I'm good."

"Not even a quarter of a cup." Token shook his head.

"Close enough," I said, putting syrup in the other cup and moving back over to where my milk had finished steaming. I finished the drinks and handed them to Token. "So I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yup, you can come over whenever, and bring stuff to watch if you want. You know how it goes." Token took a sip of his drink before putting both of them into a drink tray, and turned to leave.

"Yeah, I remember. Later." He was almost to the door when I added, "Thanks. For. You know."

"I know," he said without looking back at me. "And you're welcome." Balancing the drink tray in one hand, he pushed the door open with the other, waved at me over his shoulder, and left.

I really hoped Tweek was actually going to be okay with this. And Clyde. Fuck, I _really_ hoped Clyde was going to be okay with hanging out like this. I still felt like there was something really wrong with him that I hadn't picked up on. But I wanted to know. I wanted to help him.

_"I just know that you, Tweek, Clyde, and Token have always been a more tightly-knit group of friends, and I had to save that. I had to keep you guys together, whatever it took."_

I wanted Kenny to be right about us. And this was the best way to start.


	4. All Mixed Up: Tweek

Craig had told me to go to sleep, and I'd tried, I really had, but I was too scared, I didn't want to dream because I knew that I would end up with nightmares. I hadn't gotten a full night's sleep since we'd gotten home, and some of that was because I was so sick, but a big part of it was because I knew that I wouldn't be able to _not_ think about everything that had happened while I was asleep and I never wanted to think about it again. I just wanted to forget it all had ever happened, but I _couldn't_ forget, how could I forget when Kenny was _dead,_ when the reason he was dead was because of _me?_ Me and my stupid... _stupid_ weakness, if I hadn't done that then he wouldn't have had to die... Maybe we would all still be here again, maybe that would have worked out; the way Kenny had been talking, that last time I – we all – saw him, it was like he'd already found a way to make things be the way they were, but by then it was too late, by then I'd had to go and mess it all up and be the reason why one of us, the only one who had honestly been friends with every one of the rest of us, was gone...

I whimpered, closing my eyes tightly and shaking my head back and forth, trying to shake thoughts out of my head, but they were stuck there, they wouldn't go _away_. Images of Kenny's face, and _Kyle_ 's face – oh, God, Kyle had looked broken in _half_... _–_ when Kenny had been trying to explain everything but mostly just falling apart instead, played in my mind and I wrenched my eyes open but that didn't work, they were still there, and I couldn't make myself think of anything else. I vaguely heard the sound of my front door opening and closing from downstairs, but it hardly even registered in my brain. I curled myself into a ball in the corner of my bed, trying to scrunch up as small as I could. _I shouldn't exist,_ was all that was going through my head. _I shouldn't be here._

Everyone's life was messed up because of me. _Everyone's._ I cringed, remembering how everyone had looked at Kenny's memorial service, not just Craig and Token and Clyde, but everyone else too. Butters...and even Christophe, just him showing up meant something, even I knew that.

And Kyle and Stan and Cartman... God, they'd been the people Kenny was with the most, I didn't understand how any one of them was able to stand or talk or anything at _all_ , especially, oh God, _especially_ Stan. I'd never thought that he was as close to Kenny as Kyle had been, or even Cartman – the two of _them_ had kind of ended up being best friends the way that Token and Clyde had ended up being best friends, when Craig started hanging out with me all the time. Kind of, best friends by default when the other people you hang out with are together all the time. But Stan and Kenny had hardly ever hung out just the two of them, at least not very often that I knew of, but I guess it had to have happened more than just once because Stan had looked – _he'd_ looked broken in half, he'd looked how Kyle had looked in the hospital...

And it was because of _me_ that he'd looked like that. I'd taken one of his closest friends away from him. I didn't understand how they didn't hate me, how _any_ of them could ever look at me and not see someone horrible who wrecked their lives. Craig kept telling me it wasn't my fault, it wasn't anybody's fault, but how could I believe him when Kenny's words to the contrary kept echoing in my head?

_"There are – certain circumstances that don't let...things like resurrection happen. One – of those circumstances – is suicide."_

That, those two sentences, was all I needed to hear to be sure that the whole thing was my fault. Even Kenny's letter to me had told me it wasn't, but there was no reason for me to believe him, when it was his words that were telling me the exact opposite, and when, God, he was the one who was _dead_. If I'd known anything, if I'd been _any_ kind of intelligent, I would've known that Kenny wouldn't let us die, I would've remembered that to him, God and Satan were practically family; of _course_ he'd be able to get their help.

But maybe that was it, Jesus, maybe that was _exactly_ the issue. I hadn't known Kenny at all. Oh, God... That thought had made me feel so much _worse_ , and now I was crying again and my nose was running and my head hurt and I felt so dizzy even with my eyes shut, I just wanted Craig to come upstairs, but... But he couldn't make this better, he couldn't fix anything this time, he couldn't change the fact that someone who had been a part of my life for so long had willingly sacrificed his life just for me when I hadn't even _tried_ to be real friends with him, _ever_. I knew – I knew _everyone_ else more than I knew Kenny, he was always just, just _Kenny_ , just _there_ , all the time, when we were all together, even if Christophe or Token or anyone else couldn't come, Kenny was there, and I had had every opportunity to talk to him but I never had. I just – I hadn't _cared_. He'd killed himself for me and I didn't even know his middle _name_.

"Tweeker?"

I hadn't even heard my bedroom door open, but there Craig was; my eyes were shut but I could hear him say my name. He sounded so worried, God, he always sounded so worried whenever he talked to me, I still didn't understand why he cared. I didn't deserve it. I shook my head, still not able to say anything, just wishing for my brain, my stupid, stupid overactive _freak_ of a brain, to for once shut up and leave me _alone_.

"Hey... Hey, Tweeker, you okay?"

I felt the weight of Craig crawling onto my bed, and in another second I felt both of his arms around me. I froze for a few seconds, desperately wanting, _needing_ , for him to just hold me, but at the same time feeling like I had no right to ask for his help or comfort in any way – Kenny had been his friend too. In another second my decision was made for me; I sniffled, inhaling air the wrong way, and when I started coughing, Craig's grip tightened around me and he whispered, "I'm here, Tweeker."

I shivered a little, more out of being upset than of being cold. When my coughing stopped, it was like every bit of energy I'd had in me had gone with it; I couldn't help but just let myself sink against Craig's chest. The strings of his blue hat I knew he would be wearing brushed against my neck. My throat hurt, my eyes hurt, my head hurt, I was so tired, and miserable, I just didn't have the strength to do anything else anymore. Not even talk. I just needed him to be here right now, whether I deserved him or not. And somehow, _somehow_ , he still had the patience to be with me, and I wasn't going to let that go. I needed him. I couldn't be without him. Not now.

I'd been a mess since we'd gotten home. More of a mess than I usually was, and I knew that, but I couldn't help being that way. Too much had happened for me _not_ to be. It was a different kind of mess, though. I didn't drink coffee anymore. I couldn't – just the thought of caffeine in any form made me feel sick. Nobody knew that, though – not even Craig. It was another thing in the list of things I hadn't told him. Things I wasn't sure I could tell him.

I didn't shake very much now, not anymore, not like I'd used to. Not since...everything. My twitching was so rare lately it was almost like I was a normal person – almost. I would never be a normal person.

I only stuttered if I was thinking too much while I was trying to talk, but I didn't talk very much lately. It was only my brain that didn't stop going these days, but even that was different. I had too _many_ thoughts, that was the same, but the way I thought them was different. They came slower now. It was like my mind took more time to process anything I thought about. Like...everything about me was happening ten times slower than usual.

I knew Craig just figured it was all because I was sick, but it wasn't. I knew it wasn't, I could tell. Something in me had changed, I wasn't the same person I'd been a month and a half ago, I wasn't the same person who he – for some reason – had wanted to be with in the first place. And I was so afraid that sooner or later, he'd see that, and then he would be gone. That he would decide that the person I had evolved into wasn't who he wanted anymore...

"I'm sorry," I mumbled, sniffling as I felt Craig's chest rise and fall with his breathing. "I just... I feel awful."

"Awful like you're sick, or awful like you feel guilty?" Craig's voice was soft.

I hesitated before answering him. If I told him I just felt sick, then I wouldn't have to try to explain everything going on inside my head. God, if I even could explain it all, I was probably just insane. It was more than just guilt – but oh, God, a big part of it was, guilt for being weak, guilt for leaving Token and Kyle behind, guilt for Kenny having to sacrifice himself for _me_. Guilt was what kept me up at night, it was the reason I was terrified to close my eyes, because every time I did everything started happening all over again, I saw everything and I heard everyone, I could hear Kenny saying goodbye and Kyle crying and it all felt too real, and it was all just too _much_...

Guilt was why I hadn't been sleeping, but it wasn't the whole reason for how I felt. It wasn't the worst part. The worst part was the _knowledge_ , having to _know_ that the guilt I felt wasn't unfounded. Knowing that I could have done things differently and changed everything about our lives now. Knowing that Kenny was dead because of me. It was why I'd been avoiding everyone, it was why I could barely look Craig in the eyes anymore. The knowing felt worse than anything in my life ever had. Or, I was sure, ever would. I would rather be sick for the rest of my life than feel the way I felt inside now.

"Just sick," I said, closing my eyes, hating myself for lying to Craig but knowing I couldn't tell him the truth. "I feel sick."

"Do you need anything?"

I shook my head. What I needed was something Craig couldn't give me. "No, I –" I sniffled, interrupting myself. "I just w – want to try and sleep."

God, I hoped I'd be able to sleep at least a little bit tonight. I was exhausted, but I knew I would never be able to get a whole night's worth. But even half an hour, even twenty minutes would be nice. Twenty minutes without feeling anything... Sometimes... God, it was a horrible thought and nothing I could ever say out loud, especially not to Craig, I already knew what his reaction would be if I did, but sometimes I thought that maybe things would be better if I was just – just still in a coma. At least then I wouldn't be able to feel anything. Not feeling anything at all would be better than feeling everything at once.

But every time the thought of actually doing something to put myself back in a coma crossed my mind, I would think of Kenny, and feel even more guilty for thinking things like that, when he'd given up everything for me to be able to be alive and walking and talking again. I didn't want to make it seem like I was just ignoring what he'd done for me, or that I wasn't grateful.

I opened my eyes and, without moving my head, looked around at the half of my room that I could see – my ragged, bright orange carpet; almost blindingly white walls that Craig told me at least once a week I should paint an actual color, but I was always too worried about paint fumes giving me lung cancer; and my bed, my king-size bed that barely fit in my room. The only reason I was able to be in this room right now, in my house, with Craig right next to me, was because of Kenny. I was more than grateful. The guilt plagued me like nothing else in my life ever had, but I was grateful to Kenny for everything. I hated that I would never get the chance to thank him.

"Tweeker? What's wrong?"

I tilted my head back a little so I could look up at Craig, who was looking down at me. There was concern in his eyes, I could see that, but there was something else, too, something I couldn't name.

I looked away from him; I couldn't keep staring into that unidentifiable emotion. I'd always known that nine times out of ten, the things I worried about were ridiculous. That didn't mean I would stop worrying – there was always that other tenth of a chance, and nobody else would give that tenth of a chance a single thought except for me, and _someone_ had to always be on their guard – it just meant that I was aware of the fact that it was _likely_ unwarranted.

That look...whatever it was, I didn't like it. I didn't like not being able to tell what Craig was thinking. It made certain possibilities seem that much more possible, and that scared me. He could be thinking anything. I could be right, and he could be thinking about that one-tenth of a chance, about _exactly_ what I was worried he would be thinking about. About leaving me all alone.

"Everything's different." I hadn't meant to say that out loud, but it was true. It also worked as an answer to Craig's question. It answered it without really telling him anything, which wasn't lying to him, not exactly, it just wasn't telling him everything. That itself was a perfect example of how things were different. I'd finally gotten used to being able to trust him, to being able to tell him everything, to believe everything he said to me, and now... Now I was keeping secrets from him and lying to him and he was different somehow and Kenny was dead and not coming back and coffee made me sick and nothing made anything better and I didn't know what to _do_ anymore.

I heard myself whimper, unconsciously making the noise, and shook my head again, repeating myself in a whisper this time. " _Everything_ 's different..."

"I know," Craig said after a second. "But..." He hesitated, and I pulled away from him, scooting backwards on my bed as his arms slipped from around my shoulders. There was something different in his voice now too, and just like whatever look had been in his eyes, it was terrifying me. Leaning back against my wall, I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. My eyes started to water, and I blinked hard, not wanting to cry again, but it was so hard not to.

He hadn't looked up when I'd moved away from him. He was just sitting there, his arms still resting in front of him where they'd fallen, staring down at my floor. When I looked at him now, Craig Tucker, _my_ Craig Tucker, I couldn't tell what he was feeling or thinking; there wasn't even a hint of anything normal about him right now.

And while somewhere in the back of my head I _knew_ that I couldn't expect any of us to be exactly the same – God, look at me, I was a perfect example – there was a part of me that just wanted him to be _him_ because I needed him.

And that was selfish. I was being just as selfish now as I'd been that day...

"Token, uh, I saw Token today." I jumped a little when Craig spoke again, startling me. His eyes were still on my floor. "He came in to – just to say hi. Or whatever." He coughed.

My stomach twisted. I hadn't seen Token since Kenny's memorial. I hadn't seen anyone except for Craig since Kenny's memorial, I hadn't gone any farther than my living room since then, and nobody but Craig had been to my house. I didn't think I'd be able to see anyone and feel okay. Just thinking about what I'd done to all of them...and how they must feel about me... Craig had seen Token today and now he was acting so different, had Token told him something, convinced him that the whole thing was my fault? _Oh, God..._

I picked up my pillow from where it was lying beside me and hugged it close to my chest as my eyes filled with tears again and the beginnings of a headache started to pulse in my skull. Craig was going to leave me, this was it, he'd finally realized that I had wrecked his life, that it was all because of me. I couldn't even be angry at Token, if he'd said anything, because it was my fault, it was true. God, my head hurt so much, I couldn't stop thinking again, thinking in circles, the same things repeating themselves over and over...

_It's my fault...he's leaving...I don't want him to leave...I don't deserve him...but I need him...but it's my fault..._

I sniffled loudly, almost missing Craig's next words; his voice was strangely quiet, just another thing that was so very not like him. Just another reason for me to worry.

"He invited us over tomorrow."

"What?" The word burst out of me, louder than I'd meant to speak. I was clutching my pillow so tightly I knew if I looked down I would see that my knuckles were white, but I wasn't looking down, I was looking at Craig, who had lifted his head at my question. He reached up and tugged on the strings of his hat, something he always did when he was nervous, which wasn't often. I was pretty sure that I was the only person who knew that was a nervous habit of his.

"He invited us over. For uh, movies. You know. Like we used to do. " Craig shifted so he was sitting cross-legged, facing me. "Clyde and me and you and Token." He leaned a little bit forward, and continued, "It'll be just like old times, Tweek, just like – just like before, just the four of us and movies and popcorn, Token said you can sleep there if you still feel sick, and we can just all hang out and everything will be the way it used to be."

I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. Things would never be the way they used to be. _Never._ Didn't Craig understand that? Kenny would never come back, the reason he was dead would never change. God, I could never be able to be around Clyde and Token and pretend that everything was okay, how could I do that? I sniffled again, pressing my pillow against my forehead, willing the cool fabric to fix my headache. How did Craig think I could possibly do that?

"Tweek?"

I lowered the pillow slightly when Craig said my name. He was looking at me expectantly. I'd heard the word he hadn't said, I'd heard the ' _please'_ in his tone. This was important to him.

I really didn't want to. I wasn't ready. But if I did, maybe that would mean something to Craig and it would keep him around a little bit longer. _I don't deserve him but I need him._

"Okay."


	5. One More Tomorrow: Clyde

When we were younger, something like ten or eleven, Token's parents got him a camcorder for his birthday. Of course Token shared it with the rest of us—it was too cool _not_ to—and since we were pretty much just stupid preteens or teenagers or whatever we were, we did the stupidest, most unoriginal thing we could have done (although of course we thought we were being the most innovative kids ever who would totally end up being "discovered" and super famous): we made movies.

Really, really stupid movies.

We didn't stick to one genre; we did _everything_. Well, everything we could do, anyway, with just the four of us and maybe two or three others we could convince to help us. Kenny was usually pretty good to help out. He didn't even need to be the leading role; he literally would play a footstool if we didn't have enough props.

You'd think that Token would've been more cautious about just winging around a video camera the way he did, I mean, it was us, we weren't the most careful people ever. But he only had two rules: everyone had to be given a turn to man the camera, and everyone had to be given a chance to be the star in whatever crappy "movie" we were making at that time.

The process all started the same way; the four of us would get together, and grab some snacks, and then hang out in whoever's living room spouting off ideas until one of us came up with something that the other three didn't instantly veto, and then we'd start writing. Usually Token or I held the pen, since Craig was usually talking way too fast for someone like Tweek to be able to keep up with writing whatever it was that came out of his mouth.

After we'd roughed out a—usually terrible—script, we'd find what we needed to get it done, rehearse maybe twice, shoot the thing, and then Token would take it home, burn it onto a DVD, and at our next movie night on Saturday, we'd watch it—or them, depending on how many we made that week. We didn't edit, didn't use scene transitions, nothing. The end result was usually a big, mistake-filled, ridiculous mess. And it was always _so much_ fun.

We literally had hundreds of these things, maybe more. The longest one we ever made was something like twelve minutes, so we could crank out one in a day or two, and we never got tired of doing it. Someone would always have another idea. I didn't remember why we stopped, if something had happened. I knew it wasn't because Token didn't have the camcorder anymore; he _still_ treasured the thing, and ironically was way more careful with it now than back then. He wouldn't've just decided not to make movies with us anymore. I didn't remember anybody else suddenly thinking one day that it wasn't as fun, but for whatever reason, we stopped. I really wished we hadn't.

I'd kept all of the DVDs, and scripts we'd written, all together in a big bin in my closet, in my bedroom. It was the most organized I'd ever been in my life, with anything, I think because it was so important to me. Back then, things between the four of us had been so much easier. So much better. Craig and Tweek weren't CraigandTweek yet, we weren't so split up, Craig was… Craig was _my_ best friend but all that meant was that he and I sat next to each other in class and paired up for two-person assignments, and hung out by ourselves playing House of the Dead a couple times a week. Otherwise, it was always the four of us, always as a group, always… _always_.

After Token had left my house earlier, I didn't know what to do. I wasn't tired enough to sleep, but I was exhausted. All I could really do—all it really felt like I had the energy to do—was go over a certain part of my conversation with my current best friend over and over and over…

"' _I'm sorry…"_ _I mumbled, keeping my eyes down. Token hadn't said much since he'd gotten to my house, but to be fair, I hadn't really given him an opening to. As soon as he'd sat down on my couch it was like everything I'd been keeping inside came out all at once, and once it did I just couldn't stop. I'd been talking nonstop about Heaven and Mitch and Kenny and Craig and everything for what felt like hours. Maybe it had been hours; who knew? It was almost like it had been up at Taco Loco, except this time I was actually talking to someone who knew me. That would normally make me feel so self-conscious and awkward, but this time it just didn't seem to matter. All that mattered was that I had someone to talk to. And Token was all I had…_

" _What? Why?" My best friend's voice interrupted my thoughts. "Clyde, don't. I can't… I can't even imagine what you must be feeling."_

" _I just feel…" I trailed off, not sure exactly what I felt. "I feel like I should be…better than this."_

" _Are you kidding?" I looked up to see Token staring at me. "Dude… There's nothing wrong with you. Think about all the shit that just happened."_

 _I sniffled. Our conversation kept going in circles, and I knew that was my fault. All I could think about was Craig. Craig and everything I felt. Everything I shouldn't be feeling. Everything I'd never thought was even a remote possibility. I'd never thought about him that way before, why now? Why_ now _, when his relationship with Tweek was stronger than it had even been? Last year… Last year_ maybe _I could understand it,_ maybe _it would make more sense, when they'd broken up and all the Thomas stuff was going on, but not_ now _, not when Kenny had_ died _for them._

" _It was for them. It was all for them."_

" _What was?" Token's question made me realize I'd spoken out loud. I blinked back tears. It felt like I'd been crying forever._

' _Kenny. Dying. It was for Craig and Tweek." I reached up with both hands and pushed my damp hair up off my forehead._

" _He did it for all of us," Token said, shaking his head. "He was miserable, Clyde, all he wanted was for us to be happy again." He paused, then added bitterly, "Not that any of us are."_

" _Don't you remember?" Swallowing hard, I continued, "What he said, right before…? He didn't have to die, Token, he could have done something. He only did it because – because—"_

" _Tweek," Token interrupted quietly._

 _I nodded. "If Tweek hadn't – Kenny wouldn't've—" I took a deep breath and tried to steady my voice as much as I could. "He did it for them, he did it to keep them together. All any of us has ever tried to do is keep them together. There's a reason for that. They make_ sense _, Token. They make sense and I don't." I let out a frustrated groan and squeezed my eyes shut. "Everything…sucks."_

" _Yeah." Token sighed. "Everything sucks. I wish things could be what they used to be."_

Something about that, about wanting things to go back to what they were, made me think of our movies. Maybe because they felt like the best part of my life; maybe because of how simple everything seemed to be about life that many years ago; maybe because we were just kids being stupid kids, and nothing meant everything and everything meant absolutely nothing. Maybe because I needed everything to mean nothing right now.

So I went and, after tearing apart half my closet to find it, lugged my giant bin downstairs and started watching them, starting with the very first one we ever made.

It was terrible. We had no idea what we were doing, you could tell. Token was behind the camera, of course, since it was the first one and his camcorder and everything. We'd barely even had a script for this one, one of us—Craig, probably—had just written down a scene on a Bennigan's napkin and off we went.

The scene started off with me, sitting on Token's front step, glaring into the camera.

"Who goes there?" I cringed at the sound of my own voice. Nobody likes how they sound on video, but Jesus I'd sounded so nasally back then. I was playing a king of some kind, trying to pick a suitable prince for my princess. My character was an asshole and he ended up getting eaten by a dragon.

"Sir Hotness of Bonerland, your Highness." I couldn't help the snort that escaped my mouth as Kenny made his entrance. He, Tweek, and Craig had drawn straws to see who had to be the princess; Tweek had lost, and so, as Token zoomed out, he became visible sitting a few steps below me, wearing a pink, poofy, sparkly dress.

"State your purpose, Sir—" The me on the screen cut himself off with a laugh as the camera shook, a clear sign that Token was laughing as well. "—Sir Hotness."

"I am here for the princess, King Narwhallian." Kenny had such presence on film. He probably could have really gotten into acting if he wanted to. He was just always so charismatic. "My carriage awaits."

"Begone, yellow-haired scoundrel!" video-me bellowed, my cardboard crown slipping down over my eyes. "You will not presume to waltz into my kingdom and have what you will!"

"Oh, God!" Tweek had clearly forgotten his line. "Ghh – b – but – but—"

"But Father, he has already had me." Token obviously didn't realize or didn't care that the camera totally picked up his voice too, as he tried to help Tweek. The more I thought about it, he probably didn't care.

As Tweek stuttered his way through the—absolutely terrible—line, I heard a knock at my door. Looking up at my front door, I debated even going to answer it. The last time I'd opened my door without thinking, it had been Craig there, and one time of him showing up unannounced was enough for me. After a few seconds, though, instead of another knock came what sounded like someone kicking the door, and a muffled, "Clyde?"

Leaving the video to play, I got up from where I'd been sitting on the floor and made my way to the door, swinging it open to find Token on my doorstep again, this time holding a drink tray.

"Hey," he said, holding out the tray to me. "Drink?"

"Um." I looked at the drinks in the tray, immediately noticing the Harbucks logo on the side. That meant two things, and at the moment they were both fighting in my head for which was the most important.

One, there was a delicious drink inside that cup.

Two, Token had gone to Harbucks, which meant he had seen and talked to Craig today. Or Tweek. Or both of them.

I stepped backwards, still looking down at the tray, and gestured for Token to come in, pushing the door shut behind him as he did. He kicked off his shoes, pulled a cup out of the tray, and handed it to me.

"Here. I got you a diabetes," he said, with a small smile.

"Thanks." I held the cup with both hands, feeling awkward, and not knowing how to ask what I wanted to ask. I didn't even know if I was sure I wanted to know the answer.

Token shrugged, grabbing his own cup and tossing the tray onto the top of the cabinet beside my front door. "S'cool," he answered before taking a sip, his eyes focused on something somewhere above my head.

"So…" I held on to my Harbucks cup with my right hand, and started chewing the thumbnail of my left. Token looked as awkward as I felt, and now I was worried I'd said too much or cried too much or done too much of something earlier and that now our friendship was going to be strained and tense and terrible forever. "You came back."

"Right." Token blinked like he'd forgotten something, and shook his head. "Right, yeah. Okay. Okay, I need to talk to you about something. Come on." He motioned for me to follow him into my living room, before disappearing through the doorway.

I hesitated, watching after him as I bit off a chunk of fingernail with my teeth. That was cryptic. I didn't like cryptic. Cryptic had never led to good things in my life. I spit the piece of nail out onto the carpet – I'd vacuum eventually – and took a gulp of the salted caramel hot chocolate my best friend had brought over for me.

As soon as I tasted it, I knew who'd made it, and who Token had seen when he went over there. The caramel and chocolate flavors were proportioned exactly the way they should be; the whipped cream was perfect, not watery or overly sweet; and there was extra, extra salt on top, just the way I liked it. I took another huge sip before wiping my mouth on the sleeve of my sweater and heading back into my living room.

Token was sitting cross-legged on one side of my couch, Harbucks drink sitting on the coffee table; he'd been looking at the TV screen but switched focus to me as I came in the room. With a nod at the TV and another small smile he said, "I haven't seen these in forever."

I took a seat on the other side of the couch, also sitting cross-legged, but facing him. "Yeah, I—" I started, freezing as I glanced up to see myself, Craig, and Kenny on the screen. I was yelling into the camera about honor and marriage and, for some reason, tacos, while Craig was standing beside me, wearing a huge green hoodie, and glaring. It didn't show up very well on camera, but he had on one of those, "Hi, I'm…" nametags, and where a name would go he'd scrawled the word 'DRAGON' on it.

As King Narwhallian – me – continued his tirade about how Kenny's character could never marry the princess because Sir Hotness had not performed admirably in the many challenges he'd been commanded to face, and how that meant Sir H had to be subjected to the most painful death known to man courtesy of his – my – faithful pet dragon, Craig casually slipped off the hoodie and turned to me. With barely any hesitation he flung the hoodie over my head, managing to zip it up around me even though I was flailing around like a crazy person, emotionlessly chanting, "Nom, nom, dragon, nom," the entire time.

The chant is what killed us, I remembered, as I watched the camera all of a sudden point upwards as the sounds of every single one of us laughing blasted out of my speakers. Nobody had been expecting it, and Craig was just so good at deadpan delivery that it ended up being the most hilarious thing we'd ever heard. It was still funny now, if Token laughing beside me on the couch was any indication; and I mean, I thought it was funny, I just was too miserable to laugh.

Before I could say anything, before I could even remember what I'd been about to say before I'd been distracted by the past, the picture on the TV suddenly switched to a giant close up of Token's face. My best friend – the Token sitting beside me on the couch right now – jumped, sitting up and grabbing the remote, pausing the video with a, "Whoa!"

"Huh?" I looked at him, but he was staring at the TV. I pried the lid off my drink and took another gulp of the hot chocolate without the stupid tiny drink hole in the way.

"Dude, look at me." Token scrunched his face up and tilted his head. "How old are we here?"

I shrugged, realizing a second too late that Token wasn't looking at me to be able to see. "Dunno," I mumbled. "Nine, maybe? Ten?"

"Wow." Token leaned back on the couch and shook his head. "That's...forever ago."

"Yeah," I agreed, looking down at the contents of my nearly-empty hot chocolate. "Forever."

There was silence for what felt like a really long time, but was probably less than a minute. With the video paused and no background noise, time seemed to just drag. I stared at the frozen image of my best friend and blinked back tears. Token and I hadn't been best friends back then, not the way we were now. We were friends, yeah, best friends, maybe, even, but only as part of the group, like, the four of us were best friends.

Craig and I… We'd been way closer, at the time; we would hang out at my house without Tweek or Token, just killing zombies or watching TV. But it had been different; the two of us being closer hadn't split the four of us up the way we were split up now.

That hadn't happened until ninth grade, when Craig and Tweek started doing things together without us more often, and Token and I had started hanging out by ourselves together as a result. It had been great at the time; I remembered being grateful that at least I had one person I could do stuff with and didn't have to hang out alone all the time, when the person I usually hung out with was busy with someone else. It seemed really simple to me.

But looking back on it, it hadn't been simple.. I'd had no idea what Craig and Tweek would become, and what it would mean for what had once been 'Craig and those guys', as everyone called us.

And I'd had no idea what would happen to us - all of us - in less than ten years.

Eventually Token spoke, turning to face me as he did. "How's your drink?"

I drained the cup before responding. "Good," I said, setting the empty cardboard container on the coffee table in front of me, purposely pointing the Harbucks logo away from me. Clearing my throat, I asked the question I already knew the answer to. "He made it, didn't he?"

I looked up to see Token nod slowly. "Yeah. He did."

Of course he had. The only thing Tweek could confidently make at work that tasted the way it was supposed to was actual brewed coffee. Craig's drinks were always infinitely better.

"We talked," Token continued, while pulling at the bottom of his T-shirt, obviously trying to not look at me. "And we think that… We think that we need to start over." He paused, and then finished, "So I invited them over. For Saturday."

Saturday. Saturday movie nights, when the four of us would hang out at Token's house and eat popcorn and talk over whatever movie we had playing on the screen. They'd been a tradition for us for years. Except for last year.

I hesitated, not knowing what to say. On one hand, all I wanted was for things to be the way they had been before, when things were better. I wanted to go back to life before Stan's idea about New York, before Kyle's party, before I'd _died_ and lost everything.

On the other hand, I knew I couldn't just pretend that everything was back to normal. Everything, literally everything, had changed. I couldn't just go to Token's house and watch bad movies and smile and laugh the way I'd used to. Things were different, _I_ was different, I could barely hold myself together long enough to get through one House of the Dead level with Craig and I'd played those levels a million times.

And _Kenny_. I clamped my mouth shut against a wave of nausea that flooded my body. Things were too different. I waited for the nausea to pass and opened my mouth to tell Token no, when he spoke again.

"Clyde, please." There was something different in Token's tone now, something… Something like desperation, and I realized that maybe he needed this, needed something normal, maybe even more than I did. And I owed him something, for being there, for being my best friend, for being the only person on Earth I could talk to.

"Saturday like tomorrow?" When Token nodded, I closed my eyes, blowing my hair out of my eyes. At least that was more notice than Craig just showing up at my door unannounced. At least this way I would know what I was walking into. "Okay. I'll come."


	6. Reconsider Everything: Token

I set a third bowl of chips down on my coffee table and surveyed the room, looking for any sign that I'd forgotten anything. Chips, popcorn, various forms of chocolate, a few cases of assorted drinks, Fresca for me, cherry Coke for Clyde, and a huge stack of DVDs stared back at me from the table. A pile of pillows and blankets were piled on the end of one of my couches, in case nobody felt like getting up and actually going to a bed to sleep. I had cash in my pocket for when we inevitably ordered pizza later. There were spare phone chargers somewhere in my house, that I could go get if someone needed one, and I had a pile of cold medication sitting on my kitchen table that I would let Tweek go through to pick whatever he used.

That was everything. At least, I was pretty sure that was everything. I hadn't had to do this in so long, I couldn't be sure. Even my parents had been able to see that this was a big deal, which is why they'd decided to take off to Denver for the weekend. My mom said it was because there was a trade show there that would help my dad with his business, but I knew that wasn't completely true. They, like everyone else, couldn't comprehend why we were all so upset about Kenny dying, but this, a Saturday movie night being so important, they could understand.

I glanced at my phone to check the time just as my front doorbell rang. Almost exactly two thirty. Slipping my phone back into my pocket, I took a deep breath before moving to answer the door. I'd known I was nervous, it would be stupid of me not to be nervous about having everyone over after everything that had happened. But I'd gotten myself so caught up in trying to make sure I had everything we needed - and probably more - that I hadn't quite realized just how nervous I was. It was a different kind of nervous; it felt almost like I was on an amusement park ride I desperately wanted to get off of.

For a second I debated not answering the door and just cancelling the whole thing, but I knew I couldn't do that. Not just because I'd wanted to have a normal night with my friends - as normal as it could be, anyway - and not just because Craig had seemed to want it just as much as I had.

It was because of Clyde. Because I'd finally been able to get my best friend out of his house for longer than half an hour. Clyde didn't handle stress well; that was just a fact. But being alone made it worse. He'd shut himself in his house after Kenny's memorial service and I hadn't seen or talked to him until he'd called me yesterday. And even then, he'd only called me because Craig had shown up at his house and that had made Clyde have an emotional meltdown.

Not for the first time since waking up this morning, I wondered if I was doing the right thing, putting Craig and Clyde in the same room like this. As I reached out to pull open my front door, I told myself for what seemed like the millionth time that when it was all four of us, things would be okay, there wouldn't be as much focus or - as my inner Tweek would say - _pressure_ on Clyde. We'd just throw a movie in, maybe watch it, maybe not, and just escape our lives for a little while. Things would be okay.

 _...I hope_ , I thought at the sight of my best friend standing on my front step. While he didn't look quite as miserable as he had yesterday, it was obvious that Clyde was unbelievably uncomfortable. He had his thumbnail in his mouth again and although he was staring off to the left, down the street, I could see his eyes enough to tell that he was definitely feeling that same feeling I was. One of those, "I immediately regret this decision" feelings.

But still. He'd shown up.

"Hey," I said, and he turned his head to look at me, or, I guess, past me, into my house. "They're not here yet."

Clyde nodded slowly, and kicked at the bin at his feet, bringing my attention to it. "I brought them," he said, his voice cracking a little as he spoke. He cleared his throat. "In case, or something, I don't know."

"Uh, _yes_." That was perfect. Absolutely perfect. What better way to get us back to what we used to be than to watch us being how we used to be? I grabbed the end of the bin and dragged the thing over the threshold of my doorway. Jesus Christ, it was heavy. "Did you carry this here?"

Clyde followed me inside, picking up the other end of the bin and helping me carry it over to the TV in my living room. "Uh-huh," he mumbled. "'S'not that far." He swung his backpack off of his shoulders and set it down on the floor in front of my couch before sitting down.

Kneeling on the floor, I lifted the lid off the bin. What seemed like a bizillion DVDs stared back at me, none of them labelled, because of course not. Why would we go to the trouble of labelling things? I looked over at Clyde, intending to tell him that he was a genius for deciding to bring these over, but he had his eyes closed, leaning as far back on my couch as he could and looking a lot like he wanted to be anywhere else. I felt another twinge of guilt for pressuring him into doing this but tried to push it aside, telling myself for the millionth time that this, doing this tonight, was a step in the right direction towards healing. For all of us.

I placed the lid on top of the bin again and pulled a can of Coke out of the nearest case of soda. Sitting cross-legged on my couch, facing Clyde, I held out the can. "Coke?"

Clyde blew some hair out of his face and opened his eyes. They definitely weren't as red as they had been yesterday, but I could still see that he'd been crying again. Taking the can from me, he said, "Thanks."

"You're welcome." I let my eyes drift back to my coffee table, feeling the incessant need to check _again_ if I'd forgotten anything. "Thank you, too. For coming." Clyde didn't answer, and, desperately trying to prevent an awkward silence, I continued, "I know… I know it's not going to be easy for you. I just...want you to know how much I appreciate you, dude."

Clyde sighed, and shook his head. "Don't," he said, leaning forward to set his Coke can on the table. "I...suck. I've been selfish."

I opened my mouth to argue, but Clyde cut me off, sounding more like his old self than he had in weeks.

"Shut up, Token, it's true. I should have been there for you."

I couldn't help it - I rolled my eyes. "Oh for the love of God, _you_ shut up. You've had way more going on." I paused, trying to find the right balance between being a supportive best friend and trying to get Clyde to understand that he was being an idiot. "I'm really glad you showed up today, but if you don't want to be here, I understand. I don't want to force you to be here if you don't think you can handle being around Craig."

 _Oh, Goddammit._ I'd said the name without thinking, Clyde's eyes immediately filled with tears. "Dude, I'm sorry."

Clyde blinked, clenching his jaw, clearly refusing to let himself cry. "No," he said through his teeth, the words coming out angrily but looking anything but. "I said I'd come. And I'm here." With another sniffle, he added softly, "Just maybe… Maybe don't leave me alone in a room with him."

"Of course." I got it. With me around, and Tweek, there was more of a barrier between Clyde and Craig, some protection for my best friend. That would work as a way to ease him - all of us, really - back into this whole Saturday movie night routine.

_Ding-dong!_

Clyde's whole body tensed at the sound of my doorbell. He squeezed his eyes shut and I could see his hands shaking as he reached for his soda.

"Are you ready?" I asked, stupidly, as I headed over to the front door. Was _I_ ready for this?

Clyde shook his head no, but said, "I'm here," with a slight waver in his voice.

I took a deep breath and swung open my door.

Craig and Tweek stood on my front step, Craig's arm around Tweek's shoulders as always.

"Hey." Craig nodded at me, and I moved aside to let them in my house. Somehow it hadn't been until this exact moment that I'd realized I hadn't seen Tweek at all since Kenny's memorial service either. He looked pretty much the same - his hair still all over the place and everything - but there was definitely something different about him that I couldn't figure out until he spoke.

"Hi, Token," he mumbled as he moved past me.

No twitching, that was it. Tweek wasn't twitching at all. And when I actually thought about it, I didn't remember him twitching at the memorial either. More than that, he didn't have coffee with him. Both of those things freaked me out, but I didn't have time to freak out right now; I had to get back over to Clyde now that Craig was here. But the first chance I got, I was going to ask Craig what was going on - he'd said yesterday that Tweek had been sick but I figured that meant sneezing and coughing and having plague panic attacks, not...whatever this was. The last time I'd seen Tweek still he'd been in a coma.

"So, uh," I said, just about tripping over my own feet as I led the two of them to my living room. Gesturing vaguely around the room, I continued, "I have snacks and drinks, and a-"

"Clyde," Craig said.

"Yeah." I crossed the room and sprawled out on the couch beside Clyde, who hadn't moved a muscle. "I have a Clyde." My heart was pounding and now that all of us were actually in my house, that feeling of wanting to get off of a ride was even stronger. I nudged Clyde a little with my elbow and slowly he looked up at Craig.

"Hey," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Hey, Tweek."

Tweek sneezed in response, and Craig looked to me. "Kleenex?"

"Kitchen," I answered. Craig turned to Tweek.

"Hey, Tweeker, you sit and I'll go get you some stuff," he said. Tweek nodded silently, moving to sit on the floor in front of my recliner as Craig disappeared into my kitchen. As awkward as things were starting out, I couldn't help but smile, just a little bit, at how naturally we all gravitated towards our usual spots: Clyde on the right side of the couch, me on the left, Tweek on the floor, and I figured Craig would take the recliner as usual. Maybe not everything was so different after all. I looked from Clyde, huddled on the couch, to Tweek, sitting motionless on the floor with his arms wrapped around his legs, and frowned. Or not.

"I'll be right back," I said, hopping up off the couch. Neither of them so much as looked at me as I left the room.

Craig was sitting at my kitchen table, going through the cold medication I had set out there. "Hey," he said, with a glance at me as I came in.

"Hey," I said, taking a seat at the table as well. "Is Tweek okay?"

Craig stared at the bottle of Buckley's in front of him before sighing. "I don't know." He looked up at my ceiling fan. "Every time I ask him, he tells me he's just sick."

Guilt, guilt, guilt. "Do you think this was a good idea?"

Craig nodded twice, his gaze returning to the Buckley's bottle. "We need some fucking normal," he said.

I agreed with him, I really did. That had been the point of this whole thing, after all. We sat there in silence for another couple of minutes before Craig stood, gathering some more cold-fighting supplies as he did so. "Let's do this," he said. "What are we watching?"

"Actually," I said, getting up and leading the way back to my living room. "I have a really good answer to that question."


	7. We Do It Like This: Craig

"Okay so,” Token said as I followed him back into his living room. “Check this out.” He sat down on the floor next to a giant blue plastic bin in front of his TV. As he unsnapped the lid, I moved to where Tweek was sitting, leaning against the front of the recliner, his typical Saturday night movie spot. 

He had his knees pulled up against his chest, resting his head in his arms on top of them. I crouched beside him and emptied my arms of all the things I’d been carrying, piling everything on the floor at Tweek’s feet. Reaching out and putting my hand on his shoulder, I said, “Hey, Tweeker.”

He lifted his head and blinked at me. He was so much paler than usual, and I suddenly felt so guilty for asking him to come here today when he was sick. But at the same time, I was really fucking glad Token and I had been able to make today happen. Obviously if Tweek had told me he really hadn’t wanted to come, of course I wouldn’t have forced him. I would never make him do anything he wasn’t okay with doing, no matter how much I wanted it. He’d said yes when I’d asked him about it last night, though, and this was my Tweeker, he wouldn’t have said yes to me if he didn’t want to. 

“I brought these,” I said, gesturing to all the stuff on the floor. Tweek shifted his gaze to the pile. “There’s, uh, cough syrup, and cough drops, and Kleenex, and Tylenol, and Gravol.” 

I picked up the box of Kleenex and held it out to him. He still wasn’t twitching, hadn’t been since we’d gotten back, really. It freaked me out, but like I’d said to Token, every time I asked him if he was okay, he told me he was just sick. And Tweek didn’t lie. I didn’t want to push and make him feel like I didn’t trust him. I was 90% sure there was something else going on, but with Tweek, you had to let him figure things like that out on his own and let him talk when he was ready. Telling Tweek there was something he had to talk about before he had decided there was something he had to talk about had never ended well. He’d never taken this long to talk to me before, though, and it made me uneasy.

I knew if I let him see just how worried I was, it would make him worry more, and that was the last thing I ever wanted to do - especially now, Tweek had been through way too fucking much. We all had been through a horribly fucked up situation, yeah, but Tweek had suffered so much more than the rest of us. Token had told me a bit about what had happened in the hospital, when Tweek had woken up from his coma. It fucking killed me to think about, the idea of him being so scared like that, and what he’d done to try to make that go away. 

The day he’d shown up in Hell, I hadn’t questioned it too much, I hadn’t even been sure he was real at first, and I was just so fucking glad to see him that the why of it just didn’t seem like an issue. And then fucking Christophe had to go and open his fucking French mouth, and Kenny had had to sacrifice himself, and Tweek was supposed to just live with all that? Thanks to Kenny, we’d all gotten to come back and go back to our lives; the only reason any of us were here in Token’s house was because of him, and I was grateful to him, I really was, but at the same time, _fuck_ him. He didn’t have to tell Tweek that he was trading Tweek’s life for his, he’d known Tweek just as long as me, he knew what it would do to him, to have that guilt hanging over his head. 

That was probably why he’d been so sick since we’d gotten back. All of that emotion and guilt had to come out somehow, why not in the form of a cold or the flu or whatever? I’d been doing what I could for him, getting him chicken soup, medication, and coffee and making sure he got lots of rest, but he wasn’t getting any better, and I was running out of ideas. I was pretty sure saying what was on his mind would go a long way towards healing whatever sickness he had, but again, all I could do was wait, and feel fucking helpless the entire time.

“Thank you,” Tweek said quietly, pulling a tissue out of the box in my hand. 

“Do you need anything else? I can go make you some coffee.” I felt Tweek’s shoulder tense under my hand, but just for a second. It wasn’t quite a twitch, but it gave me a bit of hope.

He shook his head. “I can get it.” My hand slipped off his shoulder as he stood up, not looking at me. 

“My dad got a new coffeemaker,” Token said as Tweek carefully stepped over the cold medication on his way to the kitchen. “It’s weird, you have to like, program a time or something, I can come help—” He stopped mid-sentence and looked at me before shaking his head. “Uh, I mean, I think the manual is in the junk drawer still, if you can’t figure it out.”

Tweek nodded. I watched as he left the room, and frowned. I couldn’t remember the last time Tweek had refused my help like that. It wasn’t like he couldn’t do anything for himself, I knew that, obviously. Tweek had always been more capable than anyone gave him any credit for, including himself. I just thought he’d liked it when I did things for him. Especially whenever he was sick, like now. Clearly Token thought the same thing, judging by the way he'd looked at me and then cut himself off as he was in the middle of offering to help Tweek with whatever technological experiment of a coffeemaker his dad had gotten this time. _I_ was the one who looked after Tweek, everyone knew that. I was the only one who could. It was always me. And now… He might not need me anymore.

I reached up to pull my hat off my head and sighed. _Fuck_. I was probably just thinking too much again, but between everything with Tweek and whatever the fuck was going on with Clyde, this whole day was already so much more stressful than I wanted it to be. Token and I really needed to step up our game and get shit back to normal.

“What’s in there?” I asked Token, eyeing the bin. 

“See for yourself,” he said, pushing it closer to me. 

I kneeled on the carpet and looked down into the bin. A fuckton of thin, cracked, plastic CD cases stared back at me, each one of them containing one of those stupidly cheap burnable discs that used to be at every 7-Eleven way back in the day. None of the discs were written on, there was nothing indicating just what, exactly, was on them, but I didn’t need labels. I hadn’t thought about these things in years, but I definitely remembered them.

“Dude, you fucking _kept_ them?” I looked up at Token incredulously, reaching up to run a hand through my hair. 

He hesitated before answering. “Clyde did,” he said finally. "He brought them over."

I turned to look at Clyde. He was still sitting on the couch, the same place he’d been when I’d gotten here. It wasn’t weird for him to be there, that was his typical spot for movie night or whatever shit we did at Token’s house; what was weird was that when I looked at him, he was sitting straight up and staring at Token wide-eyed, like he’d just told me something horrible. 

It was a typical Clyde look, honestly, I’d seen it before; it was the look he got the time in fourth grade when that dumb bitch Mercedes from Raisins came after him for not tipping her. Or in sixth, when he’d made some dumbass bet with Cartman that he’d lost on a technicality - because you’d better fucking believe that retard would never agree to a bet he couldn’t win; and I’d _warned_ Clyde, but he hadn’t listened, and then he’d shown up at my house looking like the fucking mob was after him. It was his ‘rescue me’ face. If he twitched a little he’d actually look a lot like Tweek, when he had that expression on his face. Not that anybody could be Tweek; there was only one of my Tweeker in the world, no question about it.

The question was, what the hell did Clyde think he needed to be rescued from right now? And there was only one answer that made sense - me. According to Token, he wasn’t pissed at me, but I still wasn't so sure. It was clear as fucking crystal from the way he’d barely said hello to me when I’d gotten here and the way he was looking at Token right now - not to mention the shit yesterday with the zombies - that he didn’t want to talk to me. And really, could I blame him? I was the asshole who’d basically abandoned our friendship in a ditch for a year without even blinking. I mean, it had taken _death_ for me to realize what I’d be missing without Clyde in my life. What the fuck kind of friend was I?

Goddammit. I could fix this. I was determined to fix this. The fact that Clyde was even here today was a huge step in the right direction. I had no idea how Token had managed to convince him to come, but the important thing was he was here. I couldn’t make Tweek tell me what was really going on with him, but Clyde was a different story, Clyde I could push. When we were kids, back when he and I were best friends and co-leaders of the gang, the only way to get him to talk about anything was to just keep talking about shit and get him to hit his breaking point. It came with a lot of crying, but that was just Clyde, he cried all the time. He was emotional, yeah, but he wasn't fragile in the way Tweek was. With Clyde you just had to get him to quit hiding and then if you pushed hard enough you could get him to start talking about anything.

I knew that, and I knew I should have tried harder yesterday at his house. But I'd just been so caught off guard by how fucking awkward the whole thing was; I'd expected miserable crying Clyde, not the unnaturally quiet Clyde-shaped pod person who'd answered the door. Part of it, too, might have been because of all the time I'd spent with Tweek, adapting to the way he needed time to work through his thoughts and emotions on his own before he could have a conversation about them. I knew Clyde was different, but I hadn't even been thinking, I'd just treated him the same way, and look how well that had turned out. 

“Oh, huh, yuh - you kept them?” I redirected my question to Clyde, mentally rolling my eyes at the weird fucking stutter that came out of my mouth. He turned his head in my direction, but he still wasn’t looking at me, his eyes were focused somewhere over my head. He nodded. I caught myself awkwardly crushing my hat between my hands and frowned down at the thing before tossing it onto the carpet beside me. What the fuck was my problem? 

“He’s got all of them. And look.” Token leaned over and stuck his arm into the bin, digging around until he came up with a stack of papers. “All our scripts, too. See?"

“No kidding.” I reached over and took the sheet of paper on the top of the stack.

Sure enough, scrawled at the top of the page I was holding, in Clyde’s godawful handwriting, were the words _The Trial of El Taco_. I couldn’t help the snort that I let out as I skimmed over the basic concept written down on the page. I knew this one, I’d _filmed_ this one. El Taco (played by Clyde, of fucking course) was on trial for stealing the entire country's supply of taco ingredients from Lord Bell (Token) to feed the poor (anyone without tacos). Tweeker had played the judge; I could just see him sitting at Token’s kitchen table, wearing that stupid sheet we’d stapled together to look as close to a judge’s robe as we could. Token had somehow found a monocle somewhere to really bring out the douchebag in his character. And Clyde had just looked fucking ridiculous, like Zorro if Zorro had a Sharpie mustache and a giant sombrero.

“Remember this?” I handed the paper to Token and looked over at Clyde again, waving my arm towards the bin of DVDs. “Hey, El Taco, come here and check this out.”

“Oh my God, El Taco.” Token shook his head as he read. "I totally forgot about that. We had a whole series about him, didn't we?"

"If you can call three a series," I said with a shrug. “Clyde, seriously, when’s the last time you read any of this stuff?” 

Token looked up too, and I watched as he caught Clyde’s eye. "Years, right?" he said. "You told me yesterday you hadn't even opened the bin since what, tenth grade?" A look passed between the two of them that I couldn't figure out and then Clyde shrugged.

"Yeah," he mumbled as he slowly slid off the couch and across the floor until he was sitting between the two of us. He took the script from Token and stared down at it.

Well, this was fun and not in any way awkward. I looked at Token and tilted my head towards Clyde, like, _What the fuck do we do now?_

Token cleared his throat. “You filmed this one, right, Craig?” he asked, leaning over Clyde's arm so he could keep reading. “You must’ve, doesn’t look like you were actually in it.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, moving closer to Clyde's other side so I could get a better look at the script again too. I was close enough that I could feel his whole body tense up, like before, with Tweek, when I'd touched his shoulder. Only with Clyde, the tension stayed, and when I glanced at his face he was staring straight down, not even reading the words on the paper. 

I reached over to point at a couple of crossed out lines at the top of the page. “Look, remember? I was gonna be El Taco’s arch-nemesis, but you guys didn't think it fit with the story, so I got to film.”

Token squinted down at scribbles on the page. “Ken...” He rolled his eyes. “Ken Chilada? That’s bad, even for you.” 

I flipped him off, shaking my head. “Okay, first of all, fuck you, it’s a great name. Second, I didn’t even come up with it, so if you’re going to make fun of anybody, make fun of Clyde.” I nudged Clyde with my shoulder. "Right?"

"Oh, well, that makes more sense then," Token said before Clyde could answer me. "That's definitely more of a Clyde thing to say."

"Yeah." I sat back and frowned at the two of them, not that either of them noticed. Okay. That was the third time I'd said something to Clyde that Token had answered instead. That had to be on purpose. Which meant that Clyde didn't want to talk to me so much that he'd convinced Token to talk for him. I didn't know what bothered me more, the fact that Token had agreed to it or the fact that Clyde had decided it was something he had to do in the first place. But Jesus Christ, did it ever fucking bother me. Token was supposed to be helping me make this day normal, not worse. And Clyde and I had been friends for so long, couldn't he tell I was doing my best here? Was that not worth anything?

Fuck, I was so frustrated, with the whole fucking thing. Oh, Goddammit. I ground my teeth together and blinked against the sudden stinging in my eyes. I was not going to fucking cry. That would make shit even more awkward. My jaw clenched, I looked around the room, trying to think of what the hell I could do. I was never going to be able to talk to Clyde with Token here, not if I wanted to have a real conversation with him. And I couldn't exactly kick Token out of his own house. I was going to have to wait for the right moment.

"Wait, what does this even say?" I heard Token ask.

I refocused my attention back on him. He was pointing at a line on the paper. As I watched, Clyde leaned forward, and then actually fucking smiled. I tried to ignore the twinge of jealousy I felt when I saw it and shook my head. I was going to get him to talk to me if it killed us both. Again.

"El Taco's catchphrase," Clyde said. "I'm nacho amigo—"

"—I'm your worst queso scenario." I finished the sentence along with him and couldn't help grinning as Token rolled his eyes. Yeah, it was awful, but somehow so much fucking fun to say.

And then, like someone had shouted it in my ear, I knew what we had to do.

The idea came to me so suddenly I didn't know how I hadn't thought of it the second I'd seen the contents of the bin. "Token," I said, barely able to conceal my excitement. I wanted normal? This was exactly the kind of normal we needed. "You still have your camcorder?"

"Yeah, it's up in my room." Token said. "What are you thinking?"

"I think it's time Ken Chilada and El Taco met." It was perfect. Making one of these stupid movies would kick some nostalgia into this day and make it feel more like before, plus centering it around me and Clyde meant that he had to talk to me, at least in character. It would be a way for us to talk without really talking, and once that ice had been broken it would be easier to have the important conversation.

I saw Token's eyes light up and I could tell he wanted to do it too, but then he glanced at Clyde, who'd gone back to staring at the paper. He frowned, looking conflicted.

"Come on, Clyde." Now that I'd thought of the idea there was no way I was letting it go. "What do you say?"

Clyde lifted his head and looked at Token, who nodded at him. Again, I pushed the jealous feeling aside; never mind the fact that Clyde and I used to be the ones who had silent conversations in the group. I could see him take a deep breath, and then he nodded. "Sure," he said, the word coming out almost in a whisper.

 _Fuck yes._ It was all I could do not to punch the air in victory.

"I'll go get my camcorder." Token stood up and held out his arm. "Clyde, come on, you can go to my dad's study and grab something to write a script on." He pulled Clyde to his feet and together they started walking over to the stairs.

"I'll check on Tweeker," I said, getting up too. "See if he figured out your coffeemaker."

"If not, I think there's instant in the cupboard," Token said over his shoulder as he disappeared up the stairs, Clyde trailing after him.

I headed for the kitchen, adrenaline rushing through my veins, already running through plotlines in my head. This was going to work. This _had_ to work.


End file.
